Russian Troops Are Lobbing Chemical Rockets in Eastern Ukraine. Now Ukrainian Drones Are Targeting the Caustic Munitions.
Rockets laden with nitric acid burn brown when struck.
Russian troops are firing chemical-laden rockets in eastern Ukraine. Now Ukrainian troops are deliberately targeting the launchers.
Kriegsforscher, a Ukrainian drone operator apparently deployed near Pokrovsk on the eastern front, reported the destruction of a BM-21 rocket launcher belonging to the Russian army’s 283rd Artillery Regiment.
A BM-21 fires 40 122-millimeter rockets out to a distance of 32 miles. Normally, the rockets each carry a 41-pound high-explosive warhead. But now some Russian launchers are firing rockets with chemical payloads.
The BM-21 Kriegsforscher helped blow up—apparently by pinpointing its location for artillery—“was loaded with rockets, which, in addition to the combat component, also contained chemicals,” Kriegsforscher explained.
The rusty brown smoke billowing from the BM-21 as it exploded was a dead giveaway. Nitrogen-based chemical agents including nitric acid burn brown when struck.
“I assume they wanted to neutralize our infantry,” the drone operator added. “That’s the first time I’ve seen this kind of tactic.”
Chemical bombardment
In fact, there have been sporadic reports of tactical chemical usage throughout Russia’s 40-month wider war on Ukraine. And not just by Russian forces. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has accused Ukrainian forces of “the large‑scale use of toxic chemicals” including tear gas.
The Ukrainian National Guard’s Rubizh Brigade, holding the line around Siversk, 50 miles northeast of Pokrovsk, claimed it has been under chemical bombardment for nearly a month now.
“In the Siversk direction, the enemy has also intensified,” the brigade reported Sunday. “The occupiers are using motorcycle units and civilian cars in their assault actions.”
“The number of artillery attacks from the enemy has also increased (about 200 attacks per day), which may indicate that the enemy is planning large-scale assault operations,” the unit added.
“For the third week in this direction, the enemy has been using chemical weapons, which unfortunately is causing a lot of trouble to our defenders. These ammunition are distinguished by the extremely rapid spread of the poisonous substance, which instantly disperses through dugouts and lowlands.”
The chemical rockets make one of the most hellish sectors of the wider war even more hellish. It cost Russia tens of thousands of casualties and hundreds of vehicles marching the roughly 25 miles from the ruins of Avdiivka toward Pokrovsk last year.
But march they did. As 2024 turned into 2025, two Russian field armies—each overseeing as many as a dozen regiments with up to 2,000 troops apiece—reached Pokrovsk’s outskirts.
The lead Russian elements hunkered down just a few miles from the city. Ukrainian reinforcements deployed, stiffening the local defenses. Pivoting east toward the town of Kostyantynivka in an effort to surround Pokrovsk instead of directly assaulting it, the Russians exploited a gap in the Ukrainian line last month and quickly advanced several miles.
In the process, they’ve finally overrun the ruins of Toretsk, the major city between Pokrovsk and Siversk. Applying pressure all along the sector, the Russians are making sporadic gains that could, in time, put Pokrovsk in a precarious position: surrounded on three sides and with no secure supply lines.
“The Pokrovsk direction is viewed by Ukraine’s military-political leadership as the absolute priority for the armed forces of the Russian Federation,” the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies reported.
But Siversk is a target, too. The Russian 3rd Combined Arms Army “will try to break through to the northern bank of the Siverskyi Donets River between Yampil and Hryhorivka, and from the southeast—toward Siversk,” CDS predicted.
If the Russians advance, they may do so under a cloud of caustic gas.
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